Infant search strategies with containers that move but do not alter the location at which contents can be found

A number of hypotheses about infants' delayed search accuracy have been based upon the notion that a location associated with repeated retrieval of the object attains privileged status. Infants may need strong cues to search at a new location. However, a test is reported in which performance of 12- and 15-month-old infants was shown to be indifferent to the location. The results were reliable at an individual level. The data accord with previous research upon the canonicality effect in infant spatial search, an effect which is taken to index an experiential constraint on spatial discrimination. The experimental design thus serves as a discriminative test between three approaches: the original privileged location hypothesis, a newer spatial-contrast hypothesis, and a wider approach which focuses on experiential constraints on learning, including the canonicality effect.     

Deep dyslexia, imageability, and ease of predication

A development of existing theories of deep dyslexia is outlined. It proposes that the effects of imageability upon the ease of reading of words by deep dyslexics occur as a result of variation in the ease with which individual words summon semantic predicates, on the basis of which reading responses can be made. Ease-of-predication scores are obtained for a corpus of nouns and found to be, as hypothesized, closely related to imageability scores. It is shown that the other major characteristics of deep dyslexia can also be accounted for by this proposed mechanism. These include the well-established effects of syntactic category (in particular, of the distinction between content and function words) upon reading. Further evidence is provided that this effect may be attributed to variation in ease of predication.     

The influence of prosody on the recall of monaurally presented sentences.

Semantically anomolous sentences, which were spoken prosodically or in an even monotone, were presented monaurally and recalled after 5 sec of interpolated counting. Recall was superior in the Prosody condition, and performance in the Monotone condition showed no improvement when subjects were given prior knowledge of the syntactic structure. Also, a right ear advantage was found in the Prosody condition. The influence of prosody was attributed to its role in directing attention and providing continuity during memorization of the sentences, this being more effective when the information was received by the language hemisphere from the right ear.     

Children's uncertainty about the interpretation of ambiguous messages

Three investigations were made into relationships between children's uncertainty about the correctness of their interpretation of an ambiguous message, and their judgment of the quality of that message. In the first two investigations, we compared one condition under which 5-to 6-year-olds made a single interpretation of an ambiguous message, with another condition under which they could make both possible interpretations. It was found that making both interpretations had no effect on children's confidence about the correctness of a particular one of the interpretations. Children who made both interpretations were often confident about the correctness of one of them. In the second investigation, we found that children who were uncertain about the correctness of one particular interpretation, did not necessarily realize that they could not tell which of the two possible interpretations was correct. They did not necessarily recognize the ambiguity in the message. In the third investigation, we identified children who correctly identified messages as ambiguous after they knew that they had made the wrong interpretation, but who were confident of the correctness of their interpretation of ambiguous messages before they knew the outcome. Hence awareness of uncertainty when making an interpretation may not be necessary for the development of understanding ambiguity. The results are discussed in terms of the significance of the child's awareness of uncertainty for development of understanding about message ambiguity.     

Infant search tasks reveal early concepts of containment and canonical usage of objects

It is difficult to gain unambiguous evidence on the use of concepts by infants. Many results can be accounted for in terms of action-based strategies. The evidence reported here fulfils the minimal criteria for the operation of working concepts in infants. Search tasks are used with a filled interval which forces memory-search, and the object is hidden in containers which fulfil their customary job or violate it. Infants treat an upright cup as a more reliable location marker than an inverted one. A series of experiments probes the phenomenon. The results indicate that the infants have a working concept of containment which can be triggered by the provision of containers in their canonical orientation. Even “object permanence tasks” lead infants to access their knowledge of the relationships into which things typically enter in the world outside the laboratory.     

Children's strategies in producing three-dimensional relationships on a two-dimensional surface

It is a common task to give children a picture containing implicit depth cues and to require them to extract depth information from it. The cues are always selected from the adult repertoire; little is known about children's production of their own cues. In this experiment, 5- to 10-year-old children were required to draw one object behind another in a situation in which adults invariably produce the further object partially occluded by the nearer. The results were an age-related decline in the tendency to segregate the objects and an increase in the tendency to group the objects using partial occlusion, with a cross-over at 8 years. At all ages some children drew one object inside the boundary of the other. It is argued that the results are composed of two tendencies, a gradual mastery of discrete scaling phenomena (e.g., “up” on the page means “further”) within a given style, and a set of decisions to be made between incompatible styles.     

Knowing when you don't know enough: Children's judgements about ambiguous information

Two experiments were carried out to find out whether young children's failure to realise when messages are ambiguous is specific to verbally transmitted information about a person's intended meaning. In Experiment 1, children judged whether they had been told/shown enough to identify which one of a set of cards the experimenter had chosen. In one game the experimenter gave verbal messages about her chosen cards, and in a second game, she gave visual messages. With ambiguous visual messages, relevant parts of cards were physically covered. We expected that this would make it more obvious that the speaker's intended meaning was not being fully conveyed. No difference was found between verbal and visual conditions: correct judgements about message ambiguity occured with the same frequency in both.In Experiment 2, children judged in one game whether they had been told enough about the experimenter's chosen card, as in Experiment 1. In a second game, visual information about a card was not conveyed by the experimenter, Rather, the child operated a pointer, set in a disc with windows, beneath which lay cards. The child judged whether the window showed enough for him/her to tell which card the pointer indicated. Again, correct judgments about ambiguity occured with the same frequency in both games.The results implied that children's failure to realise when verbal messages are ambiguous is but one aspect of a more general failure to realise when one has insufficient information at one's disposal to guarantee a correct interpretation of what the world is like.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in human infants: Spectral analysis of flash and click evoked potentials

Evoked potentials of 16 human infants (mean age = 5.0 weeks, SD = 1.8 weeks) were recorded from the left and right, occipital and temporal areas. Spectral analysis showed a high amplitude, localized, coherent center of activity within the left temporal area for click stimuli, and a high amplitude, localized center of activity in the right occipital area for flash stimuli. It was proposed that the structured auditory information of the click and the unstructured visual information of the flash represented different degrees of familiarity to the subjects. With this hypothesis, left hemisphere involvement in stimulus processing would increase as the stimulus became more referrable to previous long- or short-term experience. Conversely, right hemisphere involvement would increase with unfamiliar stimuli which could not be readily associated with earlier data.     

The development of spatial understanding in infancy

This paper examines the development of spatial understanding between 8 and 24 months. In particular, it examines whether young infants code changes in the position of an object or themselves in geographic or egocentric terms. The infants sat in a baby chair which was attached to a circular table in such a way that either the infant could be rotated around the edge of the table or the table-top itself could be rotated. Rotation of infant or table could be performed independently or simultaneously. Infants were shown an object which was then hidden under one of either two or three identical cups sitting on the table. Before the infant was allowed to search for the toy, either the table, the infant, or both were rotated, a procedure which resulted in an invisible displacement of the object in terms of geographical and/or egocentric spatial position. Rotations of 60, 90, 120, and 180° were used. Three groups of infants were tested, one cross-sectional (12–24 months), one longitudinal (12–24 months), and one consisting of a group of infants already known to be accelerated in object concept development (8–20 months). The cross-sectional results indicated that egocentric responding continues well into the second half of the second year of life. Even with fortnightly exposure to the tasks, egocentric responding was still evident in some longitudinal babies as late as 19 months. The results of the accelerated group suggest that acceleration through the sequence of object concept development facilitates development of spatial understanding in a wider sense, that is, in the sense of understanding the interrelation of positions in space. The implications of these results for competing theories of the source of object concept errors are discussed.     

Group caution at the race track

McCauley, Stitt, Woods and Lipton's finding that groups were more conservative than individuals when betting at a race track has been criticized on statistical and methodological grounds. The present study which does not suffer the shortcomings for which McCauley et al. were legitimately criticized does, nonetheless, sustain their general results and conclusions. Groups were significantly more cautious than individuals when wagering $2.00 on a horse race.     

Cognitive changes associated with social skills training

Changes in locus of control and self-esteem during social skills training and at 6 month follow-up were investigated. Forty-four adolescent, male offenders were randomly assigned to a social skills training, attention-placebo, or no-treatment control procedure. The results showed that pre- to post-training increases in self-esteem were produced for both the social skills training and attention-placebo control groups, but not for the no-treatment control group. These increases did not continue during the follow-up phase; the social skills training group, which showed the greatest improvement during training, displayed a decrease in self- esteem during follow-up.The locus of control measures showed a statistically significant shift towards internality for the social skills training group during training, which was not found for the attention-placebo and no-treatment controls. During the follow-up phase, all three groups showed a statistically significant shift towards externality, suggesting a tendency for boys to view their behaviour and consequences as being under the control of chance factors or powerful others, during institutionalization. This effect was partly reversed during training for the social skills training group, but the effect was not long lasting. It seems therefore that social skills training is effective in producing an increase in self-esteem and a shift towards internal locus of control. These changes are, however, of short duration and the self-esteem shift may be the result of increased staff contact or other non-specific therapy factors.     

Obsessional slowness: a meticulous replication.

The treatment of an apparently authentic case of obsessional slowness is described. The relationship between behaviour change and emotional events is discussed. The findings replicate those of Rachman (1974).     

‘Pluralistic accountability’ for the psychological therapies? Holding the tension between diversity's virtues and the need for accountability

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the field of counselling and psychotherapy needs to find values-congruent ways of managing, and creatively engaging with, the challenging tension between accountability and diversity in therapy work. The authors strongly support the preservation of pluralism and diversity in therapy practice, in the face of the increasingly urgent, anxiety-driven demands for audit, regulation and accountability typifying Late Modernity. It is argued that if accountability itself is to be ‘evidence-based’, then incorporating a relational dimension is essential; for if relationship factors are central to successful therapy, then accountability frameworks must themselves be founded on/in ‘relationship’. The arguments against formal institutional regulation of the psychological therapies in relation to the ineffectiveness of systems are rehearsed, and alternative, more values-congruent approaches considered. In making a case for ‘pluralistic accountability’, a detailed case-study of Bristol's developing local directory of therapists is offered, illustrating how local initiative can deliver good-enough accountability, avoiding the many negative side-effects of more didactic, centralised systems. The paper concludes that innovation and diversity in the field are more likely to be preserved if approaches can be found that hold and embrace the tensions between accountability and diversity, rather than seeking ‘solutions’ that prematurely and inappropriately resolve them.     

The fearless avoiders: Comparison of various strains of rats in an active avoidance task

The effect of exploratory activity and emotional reactivity on the acquisition of active avoidance learning was assessed in rats. Four strains of rats selectively bred for a high or low degree of either of the two traits (Maudsley emotionally reactive animals, Maudsley emotionally non-reactive animals, high rearers, and low rearers) and a control strain (randombred animals) took part in the experiment. Significant differences were found between strains in the number of animals showing active avoidance behaviour. Emotional reactivity was shown to facilitate active avoidance behaviour and so did, unexpectedly, a low degree of exploratory activity. An attempt was made to explain the latter result in terms of differences in channel capacity between high and low exploring animals and the ensuing differences in attention focus on the relevant stimulus for the test situation.     

Speech dominance and handedness in the normal human

Spectral analysis was used to measure the coherence or similarity of form between occipital and temporal evoked potentials. In both right- and left-handers, coherence was greater in the left hemisphere for click stimuli and in the right hemisphere for flash stimuli. Similar asymmetries occurred in left but not right speech dominant patients whose speech lateralization has been determined by the intracarotid amytal test. Right-handers and males, however, showed significantly larger amplitudes of auditory responses in the right hemisphere. Left-handers and females reversed this pattern. It was concluded that within a basically left speech dominant organization, males and right-handers would emphasize the verbal, temporal structure of auditory information and the nonverbal, spatial structure of visual information. Females and left-handers would tend to reverse this emphasis.